Inside the Orb Factory: The Maritimes’ Toy Company
The Orb Factory got its start over 20-years-ago when founder and current CEO Steve Kay started making wired orb sculptures from his couch which he sold a local crafts fairs across Nova Scotia.
Today, the company has many lines of toys carried in over 60 countries around the world all while keeping its headquarters in Halifax.
Orb offers toys for children ages three to eight and older. Most of Orb’s products are creative and craft focused, with their biggest line being their sticky mosaics, which turned 10-years-old last year. The product follows a similar concept as paint-by-numbers where you follow a numbered legend and stick on tiles and jewels to create the finished picture.
“It’s really simple. It’s really intuitive and kids can do it themselves and their finished product looks exactly like it does on the box,” says marketing manager Stephanie Carver, who’s been with the company for seven years. “So I think people really responded to those play patterns and those are things we still try to incorporate in our toys today.”
Whether it’s plush crafts, jewelry or volcanos and rockets, most of Orb’s toys have a focus on building and crafting. Since most of us have at least one memory of a childhood craft kit going awry and looking nothing like it’s supposed to, Orb avoids that. Their goal is to offer craft toys kids can actually recreate on their own with success.
“Orb has a philosophy where they want to create awe and wonder for kids. You want to create those moments of exploration and discovery for kids. It’s why we don’t want to create toys that are frustrating or that kids need a lot of help with. We want to develop a confidence in crafting with kids early on,” Carver says.
“I think that’s why kids stop doing crafts and being artistic as they get older, where there really is fun for everyone.”
Right now Orb toys are found mostly in specialty stores, though you may also find them in Toy ‘r’ Us, Michaels and Target. Their big goal now is to expand from the craft aisle to the activity aisle as well with new products such Morph, which is a shapeshift fluff. By getting more into this area, the company hopes to break out into more big box stores worldwide.
“We hire a lot locally, especially all our designers,” Carver says. “We try to hire them out of the [Nova Scotia College of Craft and Design] and [Nova Scotia Community College] so it’s amazing for these young designers to be able to travel the world and go to toys stores wherever they’re traveling and be able to find products that they’ve created.”
Orb currently has about 50 employees working out of their Halifax headquarters where all the design and innovation takes place. They also have an office in Hong Kong that handles manufacturing, sourcing and logistics. Carver says innovation has always been important to the company. Their design team regularly travels to international stores and toy shows to get ideas and see what other companies are doing.
“The toy industry, probably like many industries, moves very quickly. We think it’s very important to be going to stores, doing store visits, looking at the market, looking at new trends developing in the market,” Carver says.
“We always make sure to bring our designers from in-house to see not only what else is on the market but to see who the big players are and where we fit into that landscape. Every year we go it seems our booth is getting a little bigger and we’re getting a little closer to those big players.”
By continuing to expand its product offering, Carver says the company hopes to become a bigger player in the toy industry in the near future.
“We’re definitely carving out a place for ourselves within the big players in the toy industry which is exciting. I think a lot of people from the Maritimes don’t realize that we’re here. And if they do, they don’t realize just how big we are,” she says. “I think moving into the activity aisle is going to open up a lot more doors for us. It already has.”